Recently I've been bulking up - did my 3x5 weight routine and ate everything in sight, hungry or not. I managed to get up from about 80-81 kg to 86-87kg, and lots of it seems to be muscle. But I also added some fat, and I'd like to get rid of it on my way back down to 83 kg. I've got a couple weeks at least before my next fight, possibly more. I'm either fighting in early November or mid-December, depending on availability of opponents...and I won't know until after I need to start cutting.

I don't really know how to change my diet to encourage fat burning rather than general weight loss overall. I can knock off 4kg easily, but it was hard work getting the extra muscle weight, so I'd like to keep that but get rid of this midsection flab to make weight. Seeing my abs for once would be a nice bonus. What are some good resources for this kind of diet?

I really guidelines rather than a strictly prescribed diet - I'm in a foreign country so I often see diets that depend on getting lots of foods I just can't find or can't afford to buy. % of protein vs. fat vs. carbs, food to avoid, foods to emphasize, etc. are ideal. For the exercises, I'm doing crossfit, barbell/dumbbell complexes, power training, and some Ross Enamait metcons, plus lots of MMA training...I think I have that down tight. I'm just not sure how to eat.

If you want to do it fast, 2800 calories and 20 carbs per day should do the trick. Things to avoid are the processed foods. Sugar, white flour, white rice. If you can't drop your carbs that low, just go as low as you can. Keep protein very high. You need more protein than your body can use to keep from losing muscle. If you can eat nothing but meat and veggies for a while, you can drop fat pretty quick. It's not easy to do for a long period of time though. I've found that as many as 60 carbs still lets you eat about as much as you want, lose weight and be fairly easy to stick to.

Another nice thing with low carb is loosing water weight. That is a nice trick you can use if you need to meet weight.

Ironman, thanks. I can follow that, mostly - which leads to my question. Will 1-2 days a week of exceeding the 20-carb (or even 60-carb) limit be a problem? There are a couple days a week where I can't control my diet - I'm given a pre-prepared lunch at work and I have almost no control over what goes it in. It always has lots of white rice plus fruit, breaded fish, stuff like that. Would eating that way for a 1-2 meals a week be a problem?

I've done Atkins in the past, so my immediate thought is "yes, it'll screw it up, you'll drop out of ketosis and your body will need to start all over again." But I don't actually know if that's true.

Awesome, thanks. I'll take the next 2 days or so to finish up the stuff I've got in my fridge, and then slide into this approach and see how it goes. I should be able to make weight no problem...hopefully I'll even get a glimpse of these ab muscles I've been working for so long, too. :D

PDell, back in the day when I was wrestling, combining a good off season program with something along the lines of a Zone or South Beach diet would get my diet inperspective.A good offseas9n program would look something like you are already doing. When I gotr within a month of matches, and making weight, then I would shift into an IF strategy (IF meaning an intermediate fasting). I would st up a window of eating, usually after preactice, and fast until that point the next day.Surprizingly, it really didn't cut into my energy reserves, and I leaned out like you would't believe. The IF was usually done with a low carb approach, but I found that it didn't really matter that much,as long as I could drop water for the weigh in's.
Tim

Tim, thanks for the answer. IF sounds a bit rough...most of my training is at night, so I'd be eating from 10-11pm and then fasting until then the next day. Since I train in some fashion 6 days a week, it could be rough.

Did you do this every day when you wanted to make weight? Or was this an intermittent program? One day normal eating, next day IF?

I'm going to go with Ironman's recommendation for now, but I'm interesting in knowing more about how you did the IF. Needless to say I generally fast most of the day before a weigh-in, then eat quick-digesting foods immediately after to be ready for my fight later that day.

My regular diet isn't any particular diet. I just eat lots of protein (meat, fish), vegetables, and fruit. I drink lots of milk and water. I avoid too much alcohol (I drink, but I prefer to drink occasionally at parties rather than regularly), go light on sugars, rarely eat bread or rice or noodles. I try to keep a good mix of foods when I eat. A little processed food as possible, except for protein powder. I try to keep Jack Lalane's admonition "If man made it, don't eat it" in mind for the majority of my caloric intake. So at least I know I'm generally getting good nutrition even if I always seem to be carrying extra body around my middle.

What I really want to know is how my gym buddies pull off their lean physiques...they seen to eat lots of starchy carbs (rice, sugar, noodles) a fair amount of protein, and not much fat. They scarf all the sushi and ramen noodles they want and look like Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. I'm a little jealous to say the least.

Just a bit on the IF thing. Nothing terribly special about it. I was doing this years ago, and worked well for me the week before weigh in's, and I would have a very small lunch, usually protein based, then eat a normal meal minus the starches. after Practice (practice from 3:00-530). Although I don't recommend this, we restricted liquid intake about a day out of weigh in's, plus I've seen some of the others take diuretics It didn't even have a name back then, IF. Recently, some of the nutition guru's were playing around with the idea that restricted calories would lead to a longer fuller life, and came up with what they called intermittent fasting, and in the original lab protocols, they would eat one day, fast the next. Dr. Eades got a hold of this ideaand tried some tailoring to fit his needs, and came up with a cycle that wasn't as rough. Day 1 eat from 6 PM till 6:-00 pm the next, fast until 6:00 pm the next, and so on. Worked pretty well for him, and he wasn't even trying to dump weight. He and his cardiologist wife co-authored "Protein Power" which is somewhere in between Atkins and the Zone, low carb, and pretty much in line with what Ironman was suggesting.. You can see the topic come up a lot over on the crossfit forum. Just an idea. Bottom line though to the last bit of fat loss is physics, calories in, calories out, which will meanthat whatever macronutient combo you are using, will have to be cut back on. I can't explain your partners though, maybe their training is burning off the calories, and yes, I've lived in Hapan , some years ago, and know all about the needle houses in abundance over there.
Tim

Well, I just found out today I won't be fighting 11/4, but rather on 12/16. So I've got lots of time to cut fat...2 months instead of 3 weeks...and my switch to power exercises pre-fight was a bit premature. But so it goes, this just means I have more time to work on cutting fat and getting it right.

Ironman wrote:If you really go at it hard you could lose 10 to 15 lbs in 2 months.

Great. I'll start tomorrow, I finished up the last of my high-carb foods today - yogurt, fruit, tofu, etc. I'll aim for as few carbs as I can.

Is it still worth getting a boost of carbs after my workouts? A banana in my whey protein shake, or something similar? Or should I just skip it and assume the carbs in the milk in my protein shake are enough for an insulin spike?

You really don't need to go for an insulin spike after a workout, the body goes to pretty much an insulin independent state as far as nutrient intake is concerned. If you're doing a shake post workout, and it was me, I'd go under the assumption that the milk sugars in the shake would be fine. After a week or so, though, see how you feel, and maybe toss in some hi GI fruit into the mix if you think you need it.I always used to take a straight protein powder, vanilla, mix it with water and 6 oz pineapple juice and ice cubes. Just that amount worked fine for me. You might also want to check into the CKD (cyclical ketogenic diets) where you go 4-5 on low carb, and do a moderate carb re-feed day for a day.A lot of people like that route. Plenty of them out there, Bodopus, Anabolic Diet, Metabolic diet, Gironda's old stuff, etc.
Tim

- I found 20 carbs a day was really hard to reach. The couple days I reached it I also got that low-carb lull in my energy. So I've been aiming for "60 carbs max, as low as I can go." I'm usually getting around 35-50 carbs a day. I get my carbs from a little fruit, lots of vegetables (spinach, mushrooms, a few others green veggies I can't ID in English), some nuts and milk. No starches or sugars, except on the days I can't control my diets. When I have carbs, I try to make them low GI and have them with a like amount of fat and protein (no carbs on their own).

- I'm not counting calories. I always found that really difficult to track, especially since I don't know the English names for half the fish and vegetables I eat. Plus I'm just lazy. I'll track my workouts to the second and the kilogram but I hate tracking food, it takes the joy out of cooking and eating. I just eat my normal amount. This includes lots of protein and healthy fats as I eat lots of fish (mackerel, tuna, squid mostly), whole eggs, chicken, whey protein powder, nuts (walnuts mostly), and beef. I use lots of extra virgin olive oil for cooking. I also get some unhealthy fats because I really like cheese. :D

- I'm working up to including some IF in my program as I get closer to my fight. I was planning to try it this weekend from Friday night to Saturday but I got a throat infection and I needed to eat with the meds. I'll try it this coming week.

My workouts are as before. I'm down 1.5kg in the past two weeks, but that's well within normal fluctuation. I am going about the right way, or did I mis-understand some of the advice and apply it poorly?